IFO MnSCU Statewide Meet and Confer

Unofficial Notes

January 13, 2006

IFO Present:  Nancy Black, Judy Kilborn, Russ Stanton, Dave Larkin, George Seldat, Becky Omdahl, Steve Bohnenblust, Cindy Phillips, Mary Kesler, Patrice Arseneault, Cathy Summa, Debra Japp, Annette Schoenberger, Cindy Finch

MnSCU Present:  Mike Lopez, Deena Allen, Barb Miller, Gary Janikowski, Manuel Lopez, Cyndy Crist, James Jorstad, Chris Dale, John Quistgaard (SU President), Chancellor McCormick, Gary Langer, Craig Schoenecker, Tim Price, Bill Tschida, Bev Schuft

Teacher Center and COPE:

IFO:  We have been working with Nancy Bennet and Leslie Mercer on these issues because we have some serious concerns about process with the initiatives coming out.  We are supportive of the teacher center; we were disappointed that it was not a center of excellence because it goes to the heart of our institutions.  We are aware of the state’s needs in science and math.  We did receive the meeting notes between the Office of the Chancellor and meetings via phone with some faculty coordinators.  I’ll ask Debra Japp and Cathy Summa to talk more about this.

MnSCU:  This was a meeting of the teacher center, not COPE.

IFO:  Right, apparently there were three meetings.  When we got the minutes it says that it is a collaborative project to develop courses for science teachers (quoted minutes).  In the future, when we look back at these minutes, it appears as if the IFO was informed, and gave consent but the issue was brought up because we had some serious concerns and these concerns were not addressed in the minutes.  We want to be supportive of this intiative, but we think we need a more formal process.

IFO:  As a Geosciences professor at Winona, I was involved but only able to attend one meeting.  I recognize that the traditional IFO processes have not been followed in how this project was moved forward.  I ask that we look at it from our side.  We need a plan to address the serious shortages in science and math and a teacher center is a great way to do that.  But faculty in other programs besides teaching need to be made aware of these opportunities.  I’m not advocating that this project not be funded, but what I am saying is that we don’t know if there aren’t other projects out there which we might want to fund.  It’s not clear that the teacher center and COPE communicate broadly with professional education.  We need a model to get the information out across the campus.  We don’t have a clear charge for COPE and the teacher center.  It’s hard to know how the IFO is involved.  We want to make certain all of our members’ concerns are addressed

Chancellor:  I think what I heard is a concern that it’s not just the education faculty, it’s a combination of the education and the academic disciplines people that is needed.  We lost the communication with the academic departments.  In particular science and math faculty need to be involved.

IFO: There needs to be a clear understanding on both sides about the representation and a commitment on both the administration and faculty side.

MnSCU:  That’s key, both sides need to work better on continuing to communicate.  COPE members represent the faculty; the university staff and Office of the Chancellor both share a clear role in communicating.  It sounds like this isn’t correctly happening yet.

Chancellor:  You can’t have science and math improve in this state unless the professors aren’t intricately involved.  It’s more than communication.

MnSCU:  Do you have any ideas to help?  We often have trouble when we have groups that are named to come together and then the assumption is that the people there understand that part of their role is to go back to their constituency and communicate.  It appears that this isn’t happening.  If you have suggestions about other ways we can make sure that happens, please let us know.

IFO:  We discussed this at length and consider it to be serious.  Models like the CTL Steering Committee work well and they have a process for grants.    CTL gives $5,000 grants that have a rigorous process and here we are looking at a $99,000 budget request that had no such process.    These are not IFO representatives.  We need structure; I see that there were only three faculty on the phone for this meeting.  We are supportive of the teacher center but we want a charge not a vision.  Funds need to come to the teacher center.  We want to work with you.  Because there are so many committees we have asked Cathy Summa to shadow our AAC, Debra Japp, who sometimes has four meetings at a time to attend at the same time.  We are very concerned about quality doctoral education.  We need support, structure, a written statement on the vision and a charge just like your other committees.

IFO:  I think there are two issues, one in the committee structures we have when IFO appoints faculty we have a mechanism to report back to the IFO in the case of COPE and the teacher center we didn’t go through that formal structure.  With the teacher center there was no consultation with the IFO.  With COPE it was handled locally.  You might want to have and IFO representative on the teacher center committee to ensure communication.

IFO:  It appears that the Office of the Chancellor staff involved in the teacher center are also involved in COPE, but the IFO is not.  We have issues because many faculty did not know about this initiative and are not happy.  Faculty are asking us what is going on and we can’t give them answers.

MnSCU:  Leslie and I will review what you’ve said and we will get back to you with proposals to make this better. 

Chancellor:  It seems deans of liberal arts education will bring it together.  This just isn’t a teacher education thing without the academic disciplines.  If academic faculty, liberal arts and academic education aren’t involved, you won’t get the quality you need.

MnSCU:  It seems as if you’ve been heard let’s move along.

PSEO Concurrent Enrollment:

IFO: We did receive the exception report and there were some concerns about future reporting.  Were do you think this initiative is going?

MnSCU:   The PSEO policy was put in place a couple of years ago.  Some of you know about the revisions, and we labored hard over controversial topics.  We want to change our policy for non-PSEO and PSEO students to be in the same classroom.  We all had concerns. One of our institutions was doing this and it wasn’t in compliance with our previous policy.  We decided to incorporate this new provision and test it and collect data and then try to make an informed decision collectively on the appropriateness of continuing this activity.  It usually occurs in small rural schools where they can’t provide these courses to their regular students.  This is the first report that we have compiled since this new policy and procedure went into place.  We had some trials compiling the data. The second set of data should be done soon for 05.  We will start looking at the results we’ve obtained and how we analyze this and make a decision about it.  The purpose of this report is to assess what is going on and to figure out our next move.  Perhaps after three years of data we can figure that out.

MnSCU:  Deena covered most of the issues.  I want to reiterate that I think we find with PSEO especially with concurrent enroll a lot of the discussion becomes emotional and hard to sort through assumptions and concerns and decipher the truth.  We felt the first report would provide with us with good baseline information so we can see how the students are being enrolled.  The 2004 report can’t serve as a baseline unfortunately.  We did not carefully track certain information and there are current gaps in data.  The 2005 report will give us a better baseline.  We asked for information that we thought would help us track – i.e. mentors. 

Chancellor:  There was a public concern early in my time here from South Dakota.  We checked and the English department at Southwest hadn’t approved of the curriculum in the high school.  President Danahar and I went and met with them.  When a teacher in a local rural school teaches an English class for which Southwest State or MSU, Mankato allows the transfer, did the faculty at the universities approve of the program/credentials of the high school teacher?  Isn’t the key that when you teach in a concurrent enrollment, if attention has been given to the quality of that teacher, is that a problem?  You can’t give college credit from one of our universities unless you, the faculty, approve of the quality.

MnSCU:  It’s not totally cleared up.  I’ve spent 25% of my time on this over the last year; it’s still a revision that needs to be addressed.  We’ve sent out clarification letters from Linda Baer in late October – we aren’t still clear on credentials of high school teachers and mentors.  We need to make this clearer to institutions. There are some real concerns. We’ve begun to clean this up but it’s not perfect yet.

Chancellor:  It seemed to me that if there’s a teacher at Worthington teaching students that the faculty at Southwest has an interview with that teacher before Southwest gives that credit.  I don’t want to hear about any more of these problems.

MnSCU:  We need to make sure each institution has that process. It’s on our list of things we need to address.  There are others too for concurrent enrollment.  We need clear parameters.  We will be working on that this year.

IFO:  I heard you say Linda sent out letters?  Did we get one?

MnSCU:  Yes, this is a letter that went out at the end of October to ask for more information about campus compliance with the concurrent enrollment 3.5.1.

IFO:  When do you anticipate the 2005 report will be done?

MnSCU:  It’s not that we won’t use that as a baseline because 3 institutions were missing significant data.  I have the data I need except for one campus.  I would hope to have that data definitely by the end of January and I’m hoping sooner.  In looking at the data we have, 71% of the classes with mixed enrollment have 4 or fewer non-PSEO students.  In most cases we’re seeing what we anticipated - there are very few students.  There are a number of reasons why non-PSEO students are enrolled.

IFO:  Are you trying to figure why non-PSEO students are enrolled and if this is working successfully?

MnSCU:  Yes, with the new procedure this was a new allowed thing. It had been happening previously and wasn’t supposed to happen.  We needed to know to help us make some decision to allow this or not.

IFO:   That’s the focus of my question.  What criteria have you decided upon to determine if this is a success or failure?  I would think you would have some criteria set ahead of time. 

MnSCU:  We’ve discussed that but I’m not sure we’ve clearly articulated the criteria.  We have had discussion in the last month about the issues and you’re right.

IFO:  It sounds like you’re not really collecting the right data.

MnSCU:  We are trying to get a handle first on if it’s happening and where.  We didn’t start this reporting process based on any evidence to us that it wasn’t working.

IFO:  Will you establish objective criteria to determine if this is working?

MnSCU:  We need to think carefully and we did ask questions about why they were doing this.  You also know there are some of our institutions who disagree with concurrent enrollment and don’t even consider mixed classes; there’s a division of philosophy.  It’s a sensitive topic.  We need to decide if this is the right thing to do.  We need criteria to help us make an informed decision.

Quistgaard:  My question was the same about objective criteria.  As I recall there is a national entity out there on concurrent enrollment; I suggest we look at their criteria and use those perhaps.

MnSCU:  We are doing that and their standards do not prohibit mixed enrollments.

Quistgaard:  Both Universities of Minnesota (Twin Cities and Duluth) were recognized in the Chronicle as being the standard.

MnSCU:  We looked at some of that; we meet or exceeded standards, but we need to see if we are in compliance.

Chancellor:  I don’t want our 7 universities to give credit for any of this unless you feel it meets your standards.  I want us not to give our credit to something we don’t think is as good as the faculty thinks it needs to be.

Quistgaard: I agree.

IFO:  The issue is whether the faculty is looking at the quality and credential of the high school.  We actually do the syllabus.  As you communicate with the administration, you need to let the faculty know what the chancellor said about the high school teacher actually teaching the course and the quality.

IFO:  We saw a piece missing from this report, there is not assessment of student success.  Are we providing quality education for students and that isn’t being assessed?  We want our courses to be accepted.  These are college courses.

MnSCU:  This office has looked at students in career and tech ed course and a subset of PSEO students and they were more successful in college courses.

The only purpose for this report was to get a handle on who was allowing exceptions, and the basis for the exception.  This report was never intended to look at the effectiveness of this.  That’s the second step.  We have been in conversations with UMD and U of M – using NASA standards to help us better assess.

IFO: do we have a list of the courses being offered in PSEO and if so, can we get a copy.  I’m interested in the scope of the courses being offered.

MnSCU:  We have 2004 data but it doesn’t list all courses by name but does identify 2 digit cip code.

IFO:  Before the next meet and confer it is reasonable to expect the 05 report?

MnSCU:  Yes, unless the next meet and confer is within two weeks.

IFO:  We always like to know the next step.  I want to know who we will be hearing from and when on the teacher center. 

MnSCU:  It will be Leslie Mercer.

Applied Doctorates:

(Handouts were given.)

MnSCU:   These two proposed policy changes I distributed are both attempts to get us aligned with the process to initiate the applied doctorate in the system.  The other one is a board policy.  The board policy is the one page that says page 238, it is unchanged since the last time we spoke and this came out of the Graduate Council - we thought we had the participation of the IFO in that Graduate Council.  The more telling pieces is the piece on administrative 1a1, see page 228, items 3 and 4.  A concern was raised with the wording so we broke it up and put the baccalaureate program offered by state universities - that acknowledges the exclusivity of the universities. 

IFO:  Can you clarify why you left the word principally in there?  We asked for it to be deleted.

MnSCU:  Statutorily Fond du Lac is able to offer a baccalaureate in teacher education - that’s why we left in the word.

MnSCU:   We were a little reluctant to take it out because we weren’t sure of the impact.  There is no intention that any of our other colleges will move into baccalaureate degree granting, there is no intention.  We wouldn’t be correct to take that word out.  We took it out for the graduate degrees because there’s no possibility that anyone would offer this type of education. We felt that was accurate to take it out there.

IFO:  How about baccalaureate programs delivered by state universities unless otherwise specified?

MnSCU:  I can bring that up to the board in the presentation.  That’s a legitimate suggestion.

MnSCU:  The only exception is Fond du Lac.

IFO:  Our Academic Affairs Committee met on this and they felt that was their strong recommendation.  We would like to have the adjustment in the language.  We appreciate working closely with you and we are looking forward to Manuel coming to our Board meeting on January 26 to discuss the doctoral degrees.

MnSCU:  I suggest you talk to Gale Olson on this.

MnSCU:  That’s not the only change in 1.a.1.  Perhaps the other doesn’t directly concern the IFO.  The second is procedural where we changed the review of policies from a 3 to 5 year cycle.

MnSCU Labor Relations Announcement:

MnSCU:  We made a selection for a Vice Chancellor we selected Mary Leary she is a lawyer and has a baccalaureate degree from Southwest.  She has a strong background in labor relations.  She will be starting March 1.

Financial Aid:

(Two handouts were given.)

MnSCU: BPAC (Business Practices Alignment Committee) appointed a group to look at a variety of different academic policies; the study group forwarded this recommendation. 

The academic and financial aid standing policies at institutions vary a great deal.  A student could continue and enroll for classes that are under the control of the institution.  You can allow a student to continue under any policy you choose but this policy is on financial aid.  The other issue, in terms of the language, came from Metropolitan - usurping faculty prerogatives. We are asking them to be the same but the financial aid policy in terms of the requirements and qualitative and quantitative is also under the control the initiations.  There’s two ways to make them equal.  You can raise the academic standard or lower the financial aid standard.

IFO:  Financial aid should be based on a risk assessment.  That’s guided by Federal policy on risk management.  When a student is making academic progress that’s a different decision and I think those two should be kept separate. 

MnSCU:  I don’t understand the objection to the label of probation or good standing.  The bottom line is the student is still allowed to continue.  If that’s what the institution wants, then that’s what can be done.  One item for discussion is if you allow a student to continue in good standing on the academic side, the student may have no clue that adequate progress is being made that might provide more motivation for the student to raise the level of performance.  The other issue was started by looking at repeats and the committee looked at students who had repeated courses without completing them; this represents a stewardship issue.  The state is paying 2/3 of the instructional cost.  That’s going down the tubes and being wasted.  If you have a standard where a student can fail to complete half of the courses attempted and still be in good standing, then we aren’t doing our duties as good stewards of the state funds.

IFO:  There is a difference between being on probation or not.  We try to carefully define probation but to a student it is a shaming thing.  To have that applied to financial aid, that is different from saying we’re defining you in not being in good academic standing.  There are hardship cases we see.  There are good arguments for having different labels.

MnSCU:  It is scheduled for a first reading of the board next week. Consultation will continue. The second reading is in March. 

IFO:  Is this on the Academic and Student Affairs Policy Council? 

MnSCU:  It’s been there once.

Pension RFPs:

MnSCU:  At the Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting we intend to recommend that TIAA-CREF be the recordkeeper.  They will continue to offer the same funds in lieu of the Vanguard funds and more.  We have a lot of work to do for this transition by July 1.

IFO:  Thank you, Gary and the Chancellor; it is good to know our voices were heard.

IFO:  When will you put out a notification?

MnSCU:  Check your HR office; they were asked to forward something yesterday - late Thursday afternoon.

IFO:  A big concern is the “mapping” of accounts.

MnSCU:  It will be most likely in the Vanguard passive funds.

IFO:  I know people got sensitive over this but people are satisfied that this will be a simpler plan in the future.  You will still have complaints about people moving their money.  Can they move their own money before July 1?

MnSCU:   I suggest they move it over to TIAA-CREF temporarily.

Abandoned Pension Accounts:

IFO:  We’ve reviewed some of the legislation that applies and it looks like in all cases in the current legislation those found monies go back into the pension plan itself. Another concern is the efforts taking place to write legislation that was not brought to the IFO.  Your proposed legislation would allow the money to be used for some administrative fees that would not benefit the participants in the plan. This is a case where legislation was written without our knowledge and we resent that.

MnSCU:  This came from the DCR Advisory Committee’s recommendation. 

IFO:  Read the statute…

Chancellor:   I believe that we under no circumstance would do anything with the money found; the only question was the earnings off that money.  That money will remain until they come forward.

IFO:  Essentially, over a year ago we discovered $1.17 million in abandoned accounts.  When this came up, the DCR Advisory Committee recommended that it should off-set the administrative expenses being charged because that would benefit all the members.  What intervened in the mean time is the bid process for record keeping where the administrative fees are going to be almost nothing.

MnSCU:  That’s just TIAA-CREF.  We have other expenses, lawyers, filing feels, etc.

Chancellor:  Back to Mary’s point.  I’m under the impression that we aren’t distributing the million. That money stays, but the earnings off that would be used for administrative expenses?

MnSCU:  Yes, that’s correct.

IFO:  That is not what we were lead to believe rather that you would spread the money and keep a reserve in case someone showed up so you could reinstate but that the principal that continues to accumulate would go to off-set the administrative expenses.  You can create administrative expense.

IFO:  Can you clarify administrative fees?

MnSCU:  The legislative language, they do not consider IRAP to be a pension account.  They don’t consider our IRAP or SRP to be a pension plan.

MnSCU:  We have to work from the advice we get, not the legal advice you get.

IFO:  You can consult with us.  We need to talk early then; if we still disagree so be it.

MnSCU: I did share a copy with Russ before we got a sponsor. 

IFO:  We always talk about collaborative efforts at the legislature- that’s working together.

MnSCU:  I talked to the committee and didn’t even give it a second thought because we worked from the committee recommendation. 

Chancellor: We need to know the facts.

IFO:  The legislation restricts it to administrative expenses; I’d like to see it broaden to possibly crediting the abandoned funds to the member accounts.

MnSCU:  I talked to Bill Tschida and Laura King and they said it is for administrative costs.  The lost money will be fenced; right now it is just sitting there.  With this new language, after the money is declared lost, the (lost) participant does not accumulate earnings.  We may use some of this money to hire search firms to find these people.

IFO:  This is how this plays out on campus….MnSCU wrote a piece of legislation, we objected, they submitted it anyway and it is being used for administrative fees…that’s how it plays out on campus.

Chancellor:  I feel that we’re seeing different facts.  Is there more that can be done?  That’s the perception.  There is a breakdown in communication.

MnSCU:  We cannot profit from the funds.  We are talking about our plan administration fees.

IFO:  We need to know how this is going to be handled, because it didn’t work the first time around.

MnSCU:  We are moving forward with the legislation. 

IFO:  I never heard of the trust fund until just recently.

MnSCU:  We talked about using the money to off-set administrative expenses.  That’s the nub of the issue.  When the DCR Committee made the recommendation…

Chancellor:  If they knew the income off the trust would be off-set on their fees…

MnSCU:  Cindy’s point is if there was communication on campus.

IFO:  There’s a windfall that no one expected.  Who is going to get it, faculty or administrative expenses?  With TRA when there are lost accounts it benefits the members.

MnSCU:  Perhaps we can discuss this with the vice chancellors.

HRA:

(Handouts FAQ and flowchart.)

IFO:  Thank you for the FAQ sheet and flowchart.  I want to thank Russ also.  We did have a specific question on military leave.

IFO:  We have a faculty member at Southwest who was on a military leave of absence at least through July 2005.  This summer he returned and submitted expenses towards his IFO HRA account.  He assumed that he had an HRA account that was established but was told he didn’t have an HRA account.  We are wondering why.

MnSCU:  USSERA leave is commensurate with other types of leaves.  USSERA is federal law that governs employer’s action and treatment to those on military leave as well as FLMA.  USSERA provides that employers will give their employees benefits to the same extent of those employees on similar leave.  We don’t provide the HRA contribution to employees on general leave. 

IFO:  I’m not sure someone on military leave is the same as general leave.  If someone was on FLMA leave…

MnSCU:  The benefits are the same.

IFO:  There is another issue here.  We have someone on military leave who isn’t receiving this benefit and the perception of that...

Chancellor:  I realize.

MnSCU:  Our obligation is to interpret the plan and apply it appropriately.  I can assure you no one was trying to stick-it-to someone on military leave.

IFO:  It sounds as if you didn’t know what you were doing when you wrote the plan or you wouldn’t have written it that way.  Now you’re trying to justify what you did.  You’re wasting your time.  Let’s get this fixed.  Why are we arguing about what you did, let’s figure out how to change it.

IFO:  You can change the plan at a moment’s notice.

IFO:  Is there a way to interpret this to allow that money?  The suspicion is that it was read without that kind of analysis; we hope that we can go forward and get the past benefits for the military folks out there so there is no confusion going forward.

MnSCU:  There was no purpose to minimize the benefits of those on military leave.

Chancellor:  I don’t think anyone has suggested that you intentionally did that but we are asking if it can be changed.

IFO:  We are at the end of the year now, and if there was anyone else he or she would have come forward already.

Common Start Date:

(Three handouts were given - memo, spreadsheet and chart.)  (IFO gave a handout of questions.)

MnSCU:  We tried to address issues you brought to the last meet and confer.

IFO:  I’m handing out the list of questions that we did forward to Linda.

MnSCU:   You’re probably seeing this memo for the first time.  Some answers were standard and we extracted them out of the cover memo on the policy and procedure.

At the Leadership Council there was not a discussion on this but there was a conference call this week.  This was not discussed on the conference call but was discussed at the December Leadership Council meeting.  They did not see the discussion draft of the policy.  This will be back on the Leadership Council agenda for February. 

IFO:  I have a question on Baer’s memo.  In the last paragraph on the first page it says a significant number of presidents approved of this.  Is this 2 AND 4 year presidents? President Quistgaard, is that true?

MnSCU:  We did a count; there were 26 or 27 presidents who supported a common start date. If I recall, the majority of Community College presidents wanted to wait until 2008. The majority of the presidents supported a common start date.

IFO:  Any time you take a vote, it doesn’t mean anything because there are less 4 year institutions and we are outweighed by the 2 year institutions.  It’s nonsense.

MnSCU:  There wasn’t a vote on the concept but a vote on the start date of the year.  There was some disagreement on the start date.

IFO:  That doesn’t address her question.

MnSCU:  The majority felt a common start date wasn’t a bad idea.

IFO:  How can you say that?  What evidence do you have?

Quistgaard:   We have to look carefully at the question you have that was put to the presidents. 

MnSCU:  No one had even seen..

Quistgaard:  Let’s get back to the question.

IFO:  I am concerned with the numbers of the 2 years vs. 4 years.  What is the rationale for doing this?  The last item is something we raised as an issue….system software.  We had a concern about the ability of IT to handle this. I’m still wanting for a rationale for doing this in the first place. 

IFO:  It sounds like what you were saying is that the presidents weren’t directly asked if they wanted a common start date.

MnSCU:  The policy isn’t even official at this point; it’s a discussion-only draft to discuss the viability of moving in this direction.

IFO:  Nonetheless you are writing a system policy without knowing if the college and university president support that.

Chancellor:  We have a meeting coming up and my impression here is presidential interest in moving ahead. We don’t vote in that group and I think we need to go back and do that.  Deena one thing is missing here and I know we’ve talked to Linda Baer about this: the university people need reasons why this is a good idea and the discussion paper needs to have that.  This needs to be discussed in February at the Leadership Council. This is not adopting a common calendar; this is just getting certain book ends to work with different technologies.  This isn’t tied down.  I’ve asked do we load up the system even more until it collapses.  I’ve even said I’m not willing to go this far without an assurance that they’re won’t be a crash.  This is not ready for the first reading for the Board, this is still internal.  This goes back to the Leadership Council. I do want to say one thing, I try very hard, as John is my witness, I don’t let the CCs or TCs out-vote the state university presidents.  We’re trying.  President Quistgaard, I don’t think you can honestly say there are situations where the cc/tc can out-vote the state university presidents.  It’s remarkable how they are all working together.  I don’t want you to think the 2 year out-votes the 4 years. We work very carefully to keep the balance; I would say we are 50/50.  Is that true, President Quistgaard?

Quistgaard:   If I didn’t see the state universities position the Chancellor would say, wait a minute, we need the state universities input.

Chancellor:  We need to talk about how this benefits students and the state a bit more to give us a reason why this will make us better.  We need more discussion.

IFO:  That’s my question.  How do students benefit from our ignoring the individual local condition?  How do students benefit from having an awareness of a unified system?

Chancellor:  5,000 students are taking courses from multiple institutions.

IFO:  What about it?  Classes being one week a part, how does this affect students?

MnSCU:  I’ve heard of cases of students who don’t have advantages to financial aid.  Is there a way to line this up, breaks are different.

IFO:  You said you weren’t changing the calendars just the start dates.  What is it?

MnSCU:  Is there a way we can line up breaks?  There is a discussion.

IFO:  The notion of a common calendar, common start date, I realize more students are taking classes on-line and the MN Online initiative. However I think we need to look at the full service area of our institution.  In the south east, it might be more important to have their calendars aligned with those in the area. They take classes at U of Wisconsin.  The second comment I have to say is that I really appreciate your comments about including the state universities.  My observation is that much of the controversy is that you aren’t making that clear to us in the position of the state universities

Chancellor:  I’ve been around along time, if this common calendar date is perceived as a top-down effort it is doomed to fail.  If the people who deliver the services can’t be believed that this is a step in the right direction then we’re in trouble. There has not been enough understanding of how we want to move that way.  People have not been involved.  You can do it arbitrarily but is that wise if it can’t stand the test for people understating the advantages?  It seems to me this won’t work.

MnSCU:  Is the reason to benefit students or the ease of your processes?  We are trying to respond to this but not obviously to the point where everyone is comfortable. One of the reasons we have said that this is called a discussion draft and may never surface as an official draft.  We are trying to figure out people’s decision and if we could come up with appropriate responses.

IFO:  I know where the Business Practices Alignment Committee came from.  I know there was an interest in making the practices the same.  I’m not convinced that there was any notion of how common start dates would hurt students.  There needs to be both pros and cons, unless you do that you won’t convince us.

IFO:  I was hearing the common start date would be an advantage to the 5,000 on line students but what about the students who are only attending one institution.  We’re talking about the difference from people who are doing cafeteria-style and those who are actually attending the institution. 

IFO:   Back to Gary, it seemed part of his reasoning dealt with the issues of financial aid

MnSCU: That’s one of them.

IFO:  You cannot go out there and legislate all of these common courses to have a common start date. It seems we need to look at the process of financial aid. We can’t change the entire country.  These days I see students taking courses all across the country and they all don’t have common start dates.

MnSCU:  We have a half an hour left.

MnSCU:  I don’t want you to misinterpret Gary’s comments about the concerns raised on the example of breaks.  Don’t jump to the conclusion we are proposing that in any way, we are not proposing a common calendar.  This discussion-only draft only addresses start dates on the calendars. We don’t want to confuse the one issue.  We’re not trying to dictate those issues when each institution tries to put together an academic calendar.  There are many things you can consider with a calendar.

IFO:  When the common start date is imposed, everything else crumbles like dominos, it does establish a calendar.

IFO:  For the draft on FAQ, I think you need to be careful with your statements.  We want to have an open discussion. 

Nepotism:

MnSCU:  What I’m passing around is the most recent draft.  There are lots of changes and they reflect the comments of a number of people.  The document is not completely done.  This language is what Linda thinks will be included at this point but she is open to further comments.

IFO:  We haven’t had a chance to look at this document dated 1/12/06.

MnSCU:  Linda is flexible on comments.

IFO: I don’t want to go in a lot of detail, I just want to say a few things.  I suppose at the top of the list for a lot people is the understanding that this language goes much further than the conflict of interest statute which talks about immediate family - this goes beyond that in terms of employer/spouse/brother/sister.  This applies other places but not in the conflict of interest statute and the household member including is particularly upsetting to a lot of people because of the hypocrisy.  Our GLBTA committee has addressed this and how household members are included in a policy but they are not included in most benefits.  I think we all acknowledge the hypocrisy in this.  I would be required to report, as would any faculty member, if I was in a household with someone; there are some real privacy issues there.  North Dakota still has a cohabitation statute, with unmarried male and females living together considered illegal.  As this is the case for many of our faculty, staff and employees, you are now requiring them to report to you - a behavior which is criminal in North Dakota.  That’s what this policy does.  There is some real privacy issues and other implications; that may be a humorous way to address this, but it reflects the underlying issues.  Discrimination against gays and lesbians is still a major issue.  You are asking faculty to “out” themselves at Moorhead and they may go else where.  I guess the issue of “household” is how household is defined.  If two students are sharing an apartment, how is that term defined?  We still have a lot of issues, a couple of our folks need to sit down with your folks to discuss this.  I talked to Linda Skallman after the last meet and confer.

MnSCU:  Some of the concerns you raised people here did observe and feel the same way. This document only includes the language she’s dealing with so far not all the comments have been received.

IFO:  This is a chance for us to talk some more so we don’t get too far down the road.

Merlot:

(A handout was given.)

MnSCU:  This issue was raised certainly at every meet and over the last few months.  I know President Black raised this issue at the September meet and confer to inform faculty about Intellectual Property rights.  At that time I stated that I would go away from the table and develop a FAQ to speculate through the faculty lens to identify questions faculty might have and draft some responses as a first pass.  I think what Nancy’s goal is to accurately reflect the concerns to make sure faculty concerns are addressed.  This is a first pass at a FAQ and this is the first time you will have seen this handout.  I will provide you with an electronic version.  Look to see if it reflects some of the questions.  I am willing to meet with your Academic Affairs Committee and we could further edit this FAQ document.  I want to answer concerns first before we develop and/or implement a project.

IFO:  We consider this to be an important issue.  We appreciate the Chancellor coming to our Delegate Assembly and hope to have a guest speaker on Intellectual Property rights. If you have any suggestions on a guest speaker, please let us know.  We are trying to inform the faculty.  This technology is moving so fast, it has its own language.  What does all this mean?  We are looking at this in a very concrete way. How does it relate to professional development, faculty rights, academic freedom, and intellectual property?  We have real concerns about this Hewlett initiative and we heard about a pilot project on courses they have at institutions like Kent State.  We are concerned about where this is going.  We heard in December at the MnSCU Board of Trustees’ meeting about the pilot project in Rochester.  However, when you start talking about less technical courses like blood pressure and move to the liberal arts you are talking about creativity, active learning and we have real concerns.  We don’t want to go down this path.  D2L is not yet stabilized.  This will be housed in D2L and moving toward common start dates. At the last meet and confer we heard we will be reviewing the D2L contract.  Let’s not move too fast. 

IFO:  I have a question about why we are doing this in times of limited resources? What is the motivation for developing something within the system limited to the system rather than encourage faculty to participate in a national project, with national recognition?  This would better use our resources.  It’s not about finding a course online and importing it into your classroom; it’s about finding objects to enhance student learning.

MnSCU:  We acknowledge that we were doing lots of stuff and implementing the process was premature at this time.  The Sr. Vice Chancellor agreed at that time which is why we are taking this slower, per concerns about Intellectual Properties in particular.  Secondarily in terms of design, when and how we do it, in terms of nationally, I am hearing we want to go slow; we need the detail initiative resolved.

IFO:   I don’t think the issue is fast or slow but why are we doing this?  Why are we limiting ourselves to Minnesota?  Why not go national or international?  There are many other outside resources out there that I go to for these kinds of things, it seems to be redundant.

MnSCU:  Could be.

IFO:  At a time when there are scarce resources it sounds like a duplication; why?

IFO:  We want to move ahead, we don’t want to be obstructionists.  We have concerns when at a Board of Trustees’ meeting there were comments made unfavorably (i.e. so faculty brains can go on vacation and you can construct a course on the fly).

IFO:  I’m not hearing in your response the crux of my point.  There is a national data base out there.  The notion of being engaged in national efforts is very important to the faculty as we propose grants to the National Science Foundation for example.  If we upload to a system-only repository we are limiting what faculty can do and it isn’t going to be looked on as favorably by funding agencies.

MnSCU:  I don’t think we are in disagreement at all.  We want multiple pathways for faculty to contribute to the learning of students.

IFO:  How was this decided to go through D2L and by who?

MnSCU:  Gary Langer must have decided.

New Policy -  Security and Privacy of Information Resources:

(A handout was given.)

MnSCU:  You can’t have privacy without security. Typically with security discussions they focus on technology but this policy is addressing information in any forms no matter where it is stored and destroyed.  We are also talking about paper.  Additionally, with the e-technology changes information has been so portable (i.e. flash drives, pda, black berries).  All of these things we need to use with security in mind.  We need to focus on the need for all of us to be participants to securing our system. It applies to all users across the system. We have been working with the technology representatives from the campuses and they have provided comment on this and now we want to distribute to the broader community and get this sent out next week with a March Board of Trustees first reading. We feel strongly about having the security policy in place as a foundation for a security program and a requirement that is identified. I am giving you a review of what is coming out next week, and welcome any comments or concerns that you identify.  You’ll get a formal correspondence, but this is a sneak peek.  There is a training and development program coming out this spring to help users understand.  People can’t be held accountable unless they understand the ground rules.

Chancellor:  I am sensing that this will need some time to discuss and think about.

April 7 Meet and Confer:

IFO:  In terms of the arrangements we will have to make hotel reservations and we were wondering if the time has been set.

MnSCU:  The inauguration activities are not set in stone yet and they are planning a lunch at 11:30, so the Chancellor will need to depart by 11:15.  We have a room set at the Maxwell Teleconference Hall, and we have a state university president attending.  We haven’t determined a start time.  A lot of Office of the Chancellor people are driving down that morning.

Chancellor:  I am willing to start as early as we can.

MnSCU:  If we start at 9:30 that would require our metro people to start at 7 a.m.

Chancellor:  I don’t think we need to bring more people than we need.  Let’s start at 8:30 and go until 11:15.  I can authorize lodging the night before.  I feel that I must be in Winona that day.

IFO: We are honored to be invited to Winona and are enthusiastic to attend.

Adjourned 11:30 a.m.